Tallarn

by John French

  Many died, but the Iron Warriors could not stop them all.

  The light of battle ringed Tallarn. Ships spun and hammered one another, jostling to reach low orbit or firing upon those who had already begun to dump troops and materiel onto the surface. Some had not realised that the planet’s atmosphere was lethal; the first transports to crash into the sludge oceans filled with the liquefied corpses of their crew taught a swift lesson to the rest. At Tallarn’s northern polar region, the ships under Admiral Phoroc established geostationary orbit above the Cobalack shelter, and began to shuttle materiel down to the mountain plateau. On the plains of Khedive, the transports of the Legio Gryphonicus landed upon the black crusted earth. Above them, visible through the gaps their descent had cut in the fog, ships fired and bled and burned. Around the Sapphire City, landers homed in on signals from the shelter beneath, and dumped hundreds of fresh war machines to link up with the survivors.

  In response, the Iron Warriors began to pour more of their own forces onto Tallarn.

  Six

  The might of ages

  Marks

  Execution

  ‘This is not real,’ said Tahirah. Beside her Akil shook his head but said nothing. The cavern chamber extended away from them, its limits lost in a haze of engine heat and exhaust fumes. She took a slow breath, and the smell of metal, fuel and hot engines filled her throat. She coughed, feeling her eyes sting and water. She blinked to clear her sight, and for a moment she wondered if she would open her eyes and find herself back inside the metal cocoon of her machine.

  Tanks. Hundreds – no, thousands – of tanks filled the chamber. She recognised the turrets of Punishers, the long barrels of Vanquishers, and the wedge-shaped hulls of Malcadors beside dozens more she could not name. The dappled colours of a hundred regiments covered their hulls, and the men and women that worked on each machine wore uniforms that spoke of worlds spread far beyond Tallarn. The sound of engines, shouted orders and the ring of metal upon metal filled her ears in a grinding tide.

  It was not just an army: it was a host readying for war. And it was not alone; this scene was being repeated in every cavern beneath the Sapphire City.

  What remained of Tahirah’s squadron had reached the shelter two hours earlier. The last few kilometres had been less a dash and more of a slither. Lantern and Talon had inched past half-glimpsed shapes in the fog, winding their course around the light of distant explosions. Tahirah had realised then what the lights in the sky had meant. The Iron Warriors had descended to Tallarn’s surface in a strength she had never dreamed that they might possess.

  She had glimpsed a clutch of landing craft briefly through a break in the fog. The might of ages had poured onto Tallarn: walking war machines, mobile artillery platforms and slab-hulled tanks. Even the half-living creatures of the Cybernetica stalked from the ships, like statues cast in clockwork and steel. Tahirah had watched the enemy until they passed out of her sight, and wondered if she would find the Sapphire City shelters already cracked open and dead.

  She had not. Instead she had found them ringed with armour and filled with weapons of war.

  Almost unable to walk, their eyes bloodshot and their skin raw from days in their suits, Tahirah’s remaining crew had passed through decontamination to find the shelter filled with a whirl of activity. Tens of thousands of men and women moved through the chambers and corridors. It had been too much for some. Vail had just slumped to the floor, his back against the wall, and shaken his head. Udo had begun to grin and babble. Tahirah herself had not said a word, but had just stood for a full five minutes watching the flow of people. Then she had started to walk. Akil had followed her, silent and wide-eyed.

  They had slipped down the bustling corridors, drawing looks as they failed to salute. At last they had reached the cavern where, all those months ago, she and her crew had skidded the tank across the bare plascrete.

  And there she had seen why the Iron Warriors had come to the surface for them now. It was not just because Tallarn had been reinforced. It was because from that moment on, this war would no longer be weighted in the Legion’s favour.

  ‘Space Marines,’ said Akil in a low voice, and Tahirah followed his gaze to where half a dozen figures stood beside three enclosed speeders. Their armour was white, but chipped and scarred so that the grey ceramite showed beneath the paint. Jagged crimson patterns were splashed across their greaves, pauldrons and helmets, and hanks of black horsehair woven with bones swung from their belts as they moved.

  And how they moved. Tahirah found she was thinking of how snakes glided over the ground – fluid and unhurried, yet ready to strike. One of them had his head bared, and turned to face her. Eyes the blue of cold skies met Tahirah’s stare.

  In that second she wanted to run, to bury herself behind plasteel and rockcrete. She jerked her gaze away from the Space Marine’s.

  ‘What happens now?’ asked Akil from beside her.

  She did not reply, but reached into the pocket of her fatigues and pulled out a lho-stick. Carefully she put it between her lips and clicked an igniter until it produced a blue cone of flame. Her hair was plastered to her scalp, the locks sheened with grease. Dirt had gathered in the creases of her face. A raw mark from her collar seal ran around her neck like the imprint of a shackle. She noticed that her hands were steady, but the glowing tip of the lho-stick trembled as it burned. She met her own eyes in the fingerprint-smeared mirror of the igniter’s case. Hardness and tiredness looked back at her. She thought of Brel.

  Light of Terra. I look like him, now.

  She closed her eyes, and inhaled the smoke.

  ‘Tahirah?’ said Akil.

  She felt the moisture on her cheeks.

  What is going on? she thought. She opened her eyes.

  Tears were rolling down her face, smearing the grime into streaks. They did not feel like they belonged to her.

  Her throat tightened. She felt the tremors begin to run through her, and she clamped down on the memories that were bubbling up inside. She breathed deeply until the tears stopped. Akil said nothing, and she did not look at him. She did not want to, just in case she saw tears in his eyes too. In her still blurred vision, the gathered rows of machines looked like frozen waves in an ugly iron sea. A metre from her, a soldier in blue fatigues was feeding chains of rounds into an ammo hopper. Further away, a girl – no, not a girl, a soldier – was laughing as she swung down from the turret of a Vanquisher.

  ‘Lachlan died when we were almost here.’

  ‘I know,’ said Akil gently. ‘I saw you take him out of the machine.’

  She was really shaking now. The world beyond her eyes was a smudged blur.

  Akil’s voice came again, low and measured. ‘Tahirah, it’s not your fault.’

  ‘It was my fault. I ordered him to fire. I knew what might happen, that the gun might overheat.’ She paused and blinked. ‘He moaned for hours. I just wanted him to be quiet. His suit was breached, you see, so we could hear. Part of me kept wanting him to be quiet. But he kept moaning. I thought he was trying to say someone’s name. Then he was quiet, and...’ She felt a bitter laugh come from behind her teeth. ‘And I was relieved. For a moment, I was relieved.’

  Akil said nothing, and when she looked at him he was looking down at his left hand as though he did not want to meet her eye. She was suddenly aware of how old he must be – he had daughters, he had said. She wondered how old they had been.

  The memory of Akil’s question drifted into her mind. What happens now? Slowly she got control of herself, composure forming like armour. She stopped shaking, feeling the ball of memories and emotions scratching against the inside of the door she had just closed on them.

  ‘Now, Akil,’ she began, as if he had only just asked the question. She forced dead calm and control into each word. Akil looked up at her, and she caught a flash of something in his eyes as she spoke. ‘Now it happens
all over again.’

  Akil let the flow of bodies carry him through the shelter. They pressed close to him, jostling him, shoving past on their way to wherever they were going. None of them looked at him, except perhaps with a glance that asked who this unwashed and bearded man was who was blocking their way. He did not mind, in fact he liked it: just walking, not deciding where to go, letting his mind drift with his feet. Occasionally he even felt as though he was walking through the tangled streets of his youth, hearing the cries of the sellers and the raised voices as they argued a price.

  He smiled. An officer in an azure field cap caught the expression and must have thought he was mocking him, because Akil saw the man’s forehead crease and his mouth open. Akil saluted, bobbing his head respectfully, and passed on. He did not know where he was going, but that was all right. For now it was the best he could hope for.

  ‘Akil Sulan.’

  He only half heard the voice the first time, and did not bother to look around. Akil Sulan was no one now – just another raider, another body for the battle of Tallarn. The world where that name had meant something was gone. No, the voice calling his name had been just a trick of his hearing, a half-familiar sound spat out of the noise of dozens of voices and hurrying feet.

  ‘You are Akil Sulan.’

  The voice was just behind him this time, and he felt a hand upon his shoulder. His own hand moved to where he still carried his dagger.

  ‘No, no, my friend,’ said the voice, now just beside his ear. It was a soft voice that purred with the accents of Tallarn’s southernmost city state. He felt a blade point as it pricked the skin above his right kidney. ‘I mean you no harm, honoured worthy, but you must come with me.’

  Akil felt a hollow void open in the base of his thoughts.

  Honoured worthy. No one had called him that since the night the bombardment had started.

  ‘Who are you?’ he managed to say. Around him the crowd of soldiers, acolytes and servitors moved on, unseeing and uncaring.

  ‘A servant of a friend, honoured worthy. He wishes to see you again.’ Akil felt the pressure behind the knife tip shift to the space under his left arm as the grip on his shoulder loosened. A man stepped from behind him, so that he was close by Akil’s left side. A hand draped around Akil’s shoulders as if they were old comrades. The knife would be invisible to anyone who looked at them. Akil could not hide the shock on his face as he looked at the man.

  He wore a deep red uniform crossed with black frogging, and pinned with silver rank bars. A broad, clean-shaven face smiled at Akil from beneath a peaked cap.

  ‘Forgive the blade, but my service to our mutual friend means that I cannot allow you to refuse this request.’ The man’s accent had suddenly changed: it was hard and crisp, all traces of the southern accent gone. Akil could smell a touch of liqueur and rich smoke on the man’s breath, as if he might have just come from an officers’ card table.

  Akil’s mind was whirling, his fatigue and shock blending and blurring. The months in the shelter, or inside the hull of Talon, seeing the world above, killing and trying to forget... it all fell into the growing dark within him. In his memory, he saw Jalen standing on the balcony beside him as night fell for the last time over the Sapphire City.

  ‘Things will change, honoured Sulan,’ Jalen had said, and the emerald lizards tattooed across his face had seem to squirm. ‘You need to accept that before you take another step.’

  ‘I understand,’ Akil had said, and turned to look the man in the eye. ‘What do you require of me?’

  The memory faded, but the tattooed face lingered as he looked at the man in the red officer’s uniform.

  ‘Jalen,’ he said.

  The man who looked like an officer smiled and nodded. ‘He is close. Come with me.’

  The room was small, no more than a box of bare plascrete hidden behind a small door at the end of a quiet passage, as if it had been made to be forgotten. Harsh light filled the space from a single lumen orb that hung from a chain in the ceiling. A trio of plasteel crates rested upon the floor, their edges scuffed and their tops covered in a thick layer of dust. The room smelled of dust too – dust and stale air. Akil took in everything with a glance and turned back to the man in the red officer’s uniform.

  ‘Wait here,’ said the man, and pulled the bare metal door shut.

  Akil let out a breath, and pressed his fingers against his eyes. His hands trembled against his eyelids. He tried to steady his thoughts, to decide what he was going to do.

  ‘Hello, my friend.’

  Akil’s eyes snapped open.

  The man who stood inside the closed door gave a friendly smile and a small bow. He was tall, and looked to be well into middle age, but the green eyes still spoke of years lived that did not show on his face. The oil-stained overalls of a low-level menial hung from the man’s lean frame, the sleeves rolled up to show thin but muscular arms. His hairless head gleamed in the light. The smile still clung to the man’s lips as he took a step forward.

  ‘Jalen,’ said Akil.

  ‘It is good to see you,’ said Jalen. His voice was rich, calm and unhurried. ‘I am sorry. It must be something of a shock. I apologise. I have been... here for a while, but I thought it best that our paths did not cross. After all, things have changed since we last met.’

  Akil just stared at Jalen. He thought of the two of them looking out over the Sapphire City, of the last light of the sun catching the sides of the buildings and turning the distant sea to the blue of midnight. Jalen nodded as if he were remembering the same moment.

  ‘Much has changed, but we two still remain,’ said Jalen, and as he spoke, coloured patterns appeared on his skin, spreading and growing like ivy choking a sunlit wall. Emerald lizards crawled over his neck and face, their bodies, tail and legs interlocking without a gap. Turquoise feathers enfolded his forearms, as delicate spirals in red and black unfolded over his palms and wound up his fingers. Jalen’s smile cracked the tattooed jungle of his face.

  Akil felt pain in his chest. He sucked down a breath, and the rage filled him, hot and acidic. His hands came up, and suddenly the smooth skin of Jalen’s neck was in his hands, and he was ramming the tattooed man back against the wall, and squeezing, and squeezing.

  Then his hands were empty, and he was spinning and falling, and he could not breathe. He hit the floor, and felt what little breath was in his lungs burst from his mouth. He rolled and gasped. Jalen was standing over him, looking down, hands loose by his sides.

  ‘You should have tried the blade,’ said Jalen, and lifted a hand to show a knife held in his left hand. Subtle waves ran through the polished curve of the blade, and the dark wooden hilt glinted with inlaid silver. It was Akil’s knife, the knife his grandfather had given him, the knife he carried even when inside his machine. Jalen held the blade up, his eyes flickering down its length until they met Akil’s stare. ‘If you mean to kill someone, do it with one blow. Is that not what they say here?’

  Akil fought against the pain in his chest. The rage was still there, binding with the pain until they were almost one. He rolled to his knees and sucked a ragged gulp of air.

  ‘You killed my world,’ he gasped and tried to stand.

  ‘No.’ Jalen shook his head as he sat on one of the metal crates. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands held together loosely. Akil’s knife had vanished. ‘No, we did not.’

  Akil felt his heart hammering in his chest. He thought of going for the door, of screaming that an enemy infiltrator was inside the shelter. Then he thought of the man in the red officer’s uniform, the man whose voice had changed so smoothly.

  He looked up now at the man who had promised to save Tallarn from its slow death. Jalen looked back – calm, impassive, waiting.

  Akil turned his head away, remembering the slow dread building inside him as he had watched Tallarn fade from prosperity, it
s sheen of wealth sustained by habit and the dwindling fat of past fortune. The Imperium had raised them up, and then had turned its face away, uncaring of what the future held for those who had served it.

  Then the war between Horus and the Emperor had begun, but it had not touched Tallarn. The future of his world, of his daughters’ world, had seemed just as bleak as before. Then, just when Akil could see nothing ahead but the cold blackness of despair, Jalen had found him and offered some hope.

  Akil turned and looked up at the off-worlder’s green eyes. He sucked in a deep breath and spat. Jalen shook his head slowly.

  ‘I never lied to you. The things we talked of, the plans we made – all were true. We wanted to restore Tallarn, to save it from the gradual decline you knew was coming. We wanted to give it back its future.’

  Akil pushed his hands down, trying to get more air, trying to rise, trying to get up and take Jalen’s neck. He would kill him, here and now. He began to rise, limbs shaking.

  ‘Listen to me, Akil,’ said Jalen, raising his hands, palms open. ‘Listen to me. This was not our doing.’

  Cramped pain flared across Akil’s torso as he tried to straighten, failed and dropped back to one knee. Air panted between his bared teeth. He squeezed his eyes shut, his forehead beaded with sweat. Slowly he felt the pain in his chest unlock, but still he did not move.

  ‘Why?’

  The word formed on his lips before he could bite it back, and he realised that it was the question he had been asking without hope of answer ever since the Iron Warriors had murdered his world.

  ‘Why, Jalen? We were close. Another few months and the Governor would have fallen. You said that there would be no war, that the Warmaster wanted Tallarn whole again. I believed that. Every coin I spent to buy the ear of the other cities, every name I passed you, everything was because I believed it. I believed the Warmaster would save us.’